The Copper Gauntlet (Magisterium #2)(39)

“Stay in here until I come back for you. It won’t be long,” said Alma before she shut the door. They heard the lock turn and then her footsteps receding.

Tamara whirled on Call and Aaron. “How could you agree to letting them take Havoc? He’s our wolf!”

“He’s my wolf,” Call pointed out.

“Not anymore,” Jasper said, examining his fingernails.

“And you,” Tamara said to Aaron. “Agreeing to some stupid deal. Both of you are idiots.”

Call threw up his hands. “What else were we supposed to do? We needed them to hide us — and now they have. If we break out — and get Havoc out, too — while they’re talking to the Masters, we can sneak away without anyone knowing. And then Aaron doesn’t have to come back.”

Aaron opened his mouth to say something, but Call cut him off. “Don’t say anything about keeping your promise. That wasn’t a real promise.”

“Fine,” Aaron said.

“It’s not going to be easy to break out your wolf. There’s probably a magical lock on those cages,” Jasper said.

“He’s right,” said Tamara.

“I have a plan,” said Call, peering out through the keyhole in the door. “Aaron, can you get this door open?”

“If you are asking if I know how to pick locks,” Aaron said, “I don’t.”

“Yeah, but you’re a Makar,” said Call. Through the keyhole, he could see the stuffy room full of cages, and Havoc curled up, looking miserable. “Makar it open or something.”

Aaron looked at him as if he was talking nonsense. Then he spun around and kicked the door. It burst open, the hinges tearing.

“Or you could do that,” Call said. “That works, too.”

Jasper’s body tensed, like he was thinking about making a break for it.

Tamara turned toward him. “Please don’t leave. Just stay with us, okay? For a little while longer. I know this isn’t fun, but it really is important.”

Jasper looked at her, an odd expression on his face, as though she’d managed to say the one thing that could convince him not to run out of there and tell on them. Weirdly, that thing appeared to be please.

“Well, you’re right about it not being fun,” he said, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest.

Call went to the cages. As Jasper had predicted, the locks were inscribed with several interleaving circles of alchemical symbols he didn’t recognize. And three keyholes. “Tamara, what does this mean?” he asked.

She peered over his shoulder and squinted. “It’s warded against magic.”

“Oh,” he said. Back home, during the May Day Parade, he had liberated a naked mole rat and white mice, without magic, just ingenuity. After Aaron kicked open the door and got them into the main room, Call felt like he had to be the one to get the cages open. Somehow.

He grabbed hold of the bars, squinched up his eyes, and pulled as hard as he could.

“That’s your plan?” Jasper said, bursting out laughing. “Are you kidding me?”

“We need a key,” Aaron said, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Or, well, a lot of keys.”

One of the bears roared, sticking a paw through the bars of the cage and batting at the air. Its eyes were orange and burning, coruscating with chaos. Aaron looked at it with his mouth open. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

Call wasn’t sure if he meant a bear or a Chaos-ridden bear, which he was willing to bet none of them had ever seen before.

“I have an idea,” Tamara said, with a quick worried glance in the bear’s direction. “We can’t use magic on the locks, but …”

Call whirled to look at her. “What?”

“Give me something metal. Anything.”

Call lifted a brass astrolabe off one of the desks and held it out to her.

In her hands, it started to melt. No, the more Call stared, the more he realized that the liquefying metal was floating above her hands. It formed into a red-hot roiling blob, blackening as it cooled in the open air and drifted toward the cage holding Havoc. When it got there, three tendrils of liquid metal snaked out into the keyholes.

“Send cold water at it,” Tamara said, her whole body straining with concentration.

Call pulled water from the animals’ dishes, forming it into a ball and using air magic to cool it.

“Quicker,” she said, gritting her teeth.

He sent the water at what was left of the astrolabe. The metal hissed and the water evaporated into a cloud. Call jumped back, falling awkwardly against one of the cages.

When the cloud cleared, Tamara was holding a three-part key.

Havoc whimpered. Tamara pressed the key into the lock and twisted it; there were three distinct clicks — one, two, and then a third that echoed all around the room. The cage popped open and Havoc bounded out, sending the door swinging. Then, more clicks rang out as all the cage doors popped open.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have unlocked all three locks,” Call said into the unnerving silence that followed.

As the animals burst free from their cages, Jasper started yelling. The bear heaved its way up and out. Foxes, dogs, wolves, and stoats all poured out of their prisons.

“Go!” Call shouted at them. “Go and attack — I mean, go and distract the Masters! Lead them away from here!”